DRINKING WATER
Why Planning Is The Hero Of AMI Deployment
Thorough planning, accurate data, and strong communication are the keys to successful AMI deployments, preventing costly disruptions and ensuring technology delivers long-term operational and customer service value.
DRINKING WATER CASE STUDIES AND WHITE PAPERS
-
Enhancing Data Capabilities For Greenville Water Utility
The Greenville Water Utility in Indiana is leveraging Qatium to enhance its water management and leak detection capabilities, significantly improving service efficiency.
-
City Of Auburndale Leading The Way With Smart Water Technologies
Located in central Florida, the City of Auburndale is a thriving and steadily growing community that boasts great spaces to live, work and play. With more than a dozen lakes and ponds within its borders, a crucial component of the city’s appeal can be found in its abundance of water. In 2016, the Public Utilities Department saw a need to upgrade aging infrastructure across its water system. The city’s water meters and endpoints had provided many years of reliable service, and it was an opportune time to investigate how more advanced technology could benefit the utility and its customers.
-
City Solves Reliability And Maintenance Problems For WTP Hypo Feeds
A municipal water quality manager reports replacement of sodium hypochlorite (hypo) vacuum feeder units with a more advanced type at one water treatment plant (WTP) has helped allow for continued reliability for chlorination.
-
Evaluation Of Ceralite-A As An Alternative To Anthracite Filter Media
The Golden Heart WTP located in Fairbanks Alaska is a lime softened, ground water treatment plant with five filter basins, with a combined surface area of 1495 ft2 . Typical filter loading rates are in the 2.3 –to 3.1 gpm/ft2
-
'Smart' Distribution Strategies Save More Than Just Water
Water distribution system managers and administrators — whether they are dealing with water scarcity, mandated regulatory compliance, or non-revenue water (NRW) losses — have to be concerned about financial as well as physical solutions. Fortunately, more comprehensive solutions are being developed to afford success in both of those areas. Here are several examples of what is being achieved.
-
Pumping And Performance Analytics: A Penny Saved Is A Penny Earned
Pump performance analytics are just as important as having properly maintained pumps for saving money through optimized treatment plant and distribution system operations. Discover how one utility is using real-time analytics to manage in-plant operations as well as the long-distance relationship between its remote water treatment facility and city distribution system.
-
Lessons Learned From Flint
We all hope that the Flint Water Crisis – where cost-cutting measures led to the drinking water supply to become severely tainted with lead – was an isolated incident. However, it is not impossible that a similar event could happen again, especially in a similarly desperate city with limited financial resources. Here are a few key points that should be considered to avoid repeating such a tragedy.
-
Geospatial Artificial Intelligence And The New Italian Renaissance
Under pressure to radically improve leak detection and prevention, Italian water utility Acquedotto del Fiora is the latest European water company to adopt geospatial artificial intelligence (AI) techniques as part of its plans to boost performance.
-
Why The Hotel Industry Is A Key Opportunity For Water Treatment
As water quality is directly tied to guest experience in the hotel industry, water treatment systems play a pivotal role in achieving customer satisfaction while aligning with sustainability goals.
-
The Hidden Cost Of Water Leaks
Every day in the U.S., an estimated 6 billion gallons of water is lost due to leaks in our water distribution systems. That’s enough to meet the needs of 60 million people—and it’s not just your water that’s being lost.
DRINKING WATER APPLICATION NOTES
-
A Comparative Study Of On-Line And Laboratory TOC Analyzers For Analysis Of Raw And Finished Drinking Water4/5/2013
Total organic carbon (TOC) analysis is an important indicator of water quality throughout the drinking water treatment process. Raw source water is progressively treated in chemical coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, and filtration steps to remove particulate matter and natural organic matter (NOM).
-
Application Bulletin: Reverse Osmosis3/19/2008
Osmosis is the phenomenon of lower dissolved solids in water passing through a semi-permeable membrane into higher dissolved solids water until a near equilibrium is reached
-
Complete Flow Solutions11/11/2024
Siemens’ extensive portfolio includes various flow measurement technologies, such as Coriolis, clamp-on ultrasonic, vortex, and differential pressure meters, catering to a wide range of industrial needs.
-
Bardac® LF 18 — A Novel Cooling Water Algaecide10/23/2020
The active ingredient in Bardac® LF 18 is dioctyl dimethyl ammonium chloride. This product comes in two concentrations: -10WT (10% w/w) and -50WT (50% w/w). Several chemical properties of this product yield key benefits that set it apart from other industrial cooling water products. It is a quaternary ammonium compound (quat). Quats are typically low cost and highly effective biocides for a broad spectrum of organisms.
-
Solution For Algae Blooms12/17/2015
Harmsco® Filtration Products is pleased to offer a solution to the ever increasing blue-algae blooms in water sources. A multi-barrier approach is necessary to physically remove intact (algae and cyanobacteria) before they rupture in the treatment process and then remove extracellular cyanobacteria through adsorption.
-
Real-Time Conductivity Monitoring Estimates Chloride Levels In Minnesota Watershed By Using The Aqua TROLL 20011/18/2011Monitoring deicing chemical levels can help researchers, city governments, and regulatory agencies understand runoff impacts on surface water, groundwater, and surrounding environments.
-
Take Control Of Your Water Distribution Network With Digitalization And Remote Monitoring5/19/2022
Any process plant constantly generates a high volume of status data. Today, this data can be extracted from the plant, stored, analyzed, and prepared to meet operator needs and lower marginal costs.
-
Ultrapure Water For Determination of Toxic Elements In Environmental Analyses4/10/2018
In this paper the importance of reagent water quality for toxic element environmental analyses is discussed, and the suitability of fresh ultrapure water produced using MilliporeSigma water purification systems for ICP-OES and ICP-MS trace element analyses in environmental laboratories is demonstrated.
-
Biofouling Control In Cooling Towers With A Halogen Stabilizer10/22/2020
Biofouling in cooling towers is undesirable because it can reduce heat transfer efficiency, restrict water flow, and accelerate corrosion rates. Of even greater concern is the fact that pathogen growth in cooling towers can lead to disease transmission. Given the favorable growth environment of a cooling tower, these microorganisms can reproduce, proliferate and form complex biofilm communities. Legionella bacteria, which cause Legionnaires’ disease, are one of the greatest concerns from a public health standpoint because infections are often lethal and cooling towers are the most frequently reported non-potable water source of Legionnaires’ disease outbreaks (Llewellyn 2017).
-
Protection Of Membrane Systems Utilized For Municipal Water12/1/2020
As water scarcity issues around the world become more acute, more municipalities are having to turn to alternative water sources for potable water supplies. Also, many municipalities in coastal areas are seeing the quality of their water sources degrade as sea water intrusion occurs.
LATEST INSIGHTS ON DRINKING WATER
-
The scientific and operational complexities of portable lead analysis are surprising but surmountable.
-
Bathymetric modeling maps underwater terrain. It also helps guide planning, prevent hazards, and build climate-resilient infrastructure.
-
The data center industry stands at a critical juncture. As facilities scale to meet exponential computing demands, water consumption has emerged as a defining operational challenge. Traditional approaches focused on water efficiency are no longer sufficient.
-
When pregnant women drink water that comes from wells downstream of sites contaminated with PFAS, known as “forever chemicals,” the risks to their babies’ health substantially increase, a new study found. These risks include the chance of low birth weight, preterm birth, and infant mortality.
-
Beaverton Water Division’s transition to Kamstrup AMI and acoustic leak detection is modernizing meter reading, reducing infrastructure costs, improving leak identification, and streamlining operations as deployment progresses.
-
Learn how the Mustang Bayou Service Area (MBSA) Water System Improvements project delivered a fast-tracked, multi-phase response to rapid development and critical capacity challenges in one of the Missouri City’s fastest-growing regions.
ABOUT DRINKING WATER
In most developed countries, drinking water is regulated to ensure that it meets drinking water quality standards. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administers these standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA).
Drinking water considerations can be divided into three core areas of concern:
- Source water for a community’s drinking water supply
- Drinking water treatment of source water
- Distribution of treated drinking water to consumers
Drinking Water Sources
Source water access is imperative to human survival. Sources may include groundwater from aquifers, surface water from rivers and streams and seawater through a desalination process. Direct or indirect water reuse is also growing in popularity in communities with limited access to sources of traditional surface or groundwater.
Source water scarcity is a growing concern as populations grow and move to warmer, less aqueous climates; climatic changes take place and industrial and agricultural processes compete with the public’s need for water. The scarcity of water supply and water conservation are major focuses of the American Water Works Association.
Drinking Water Treatment
Drinking Water Treatment involves the removal of pathogens and other contaminants from source water in order to make it safe for humans to consume. Treatment of public drinking water is mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. Common examples of contaminants that need to be treated and removed from water before it is considered potable are microorganisms, disinfectants, disinfection byproducts, inorganic chemicals, organic chemicals and radionuclides.
There are a variety of technologies and processes that can be used for contaminant removal and the removal of pathogens to decontaminate or treat water in a drinking water treatment plant before the clean water is pumped into the water distribution system for consumption.
The first stage in treating drinking water is often called pretreatment and involves screens to remove large debris and objects from the water supply. Aeration can also be used in the pretreatment phase. By mixing air and water, unwanted gases and minerals are removed and the water improves in color, taste and odor.
The second stage in the drinking water treatment process involves coagulation and flocculation. A coagulating agent is added to the water which causes suspended particles to stick together into clumps of material called floc. In sedimentation basins, the heavier floc separates from the water supply and sinks to form sludge, allowing the less turbid water to continue through the process.
During the filtration stage, smaller particles not removed by flocculation are removed from the treated water by running the water through a series of filters. Filter media can include sand, granulated carbon or manufactured membranes. Filtration using reverse osmosis membranes is a critical component of removing salt particles where desalination is being used to treat brackish water or seawater into drinking water.
Following filtration, the water is disinfected to kill or disable any microbes or viruses that could make the consumer sick. The most traditional disinfection method for treating drinking water uses chlorine or chloramines. However, new drinking water disinfection methods are constantly coming to market. Two disinfection methods that have been gaining traction use ozone and ultra-violet (UV) light to disinfect the water supply.
Drinking Water Distribution
Drinking water distribution involves the management of flow of the treated water to the consumer. By some estimates, up to 30% of treated water fails to reach the consumer. This water, often called non-revenue water, escapes from the distribution system through leaks in pipelines and joints, and in extreme cases through water main breaks.
A public water authority manages drinking water distribution through a network of pipes, pumps and valves and monitors that flow using flow, level and pressure measurement sensors and equipment.
Water meters and metering systems such as automatic meter reading (AMR) and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) allows a water utility to assess a consumer’s water use and charge them for the correct amount of water they have consumed.